For my music video, I chose the song ‘Umbrella’ by R’n’B artist Rihanna. I researched the codes and conventions of this genre and watched not only the Umbrella video but other Rihanna videos amongst music videos by other artists such as Beyonce. I discovered that Rihanna was quite sexualised as the main artist, a common theme amongst the R’n’B genre. In female R’n’B singers videos they will wear minimal clothing, however in male R’n’B artist videos they will have women who are dressed in a minimalist way. I decided to do a performance based video as this is typical of the genre. I made this decision based on several music videos I watched, such as Beyonce’s music video to her song ‘Single Ladies’. This features Beyonce dancing for the entire song. I also watched videos of Rihanna most of which feature her singing the words to her song such as the video to her song ‘Rudeboy’. After watching this I decided I wanted to include lots of singing the song directly to the camera. Rihanna herself is a performer so I decided the carry this theme through to my own video. I also included shots of my protagonist Georgia displaying dance elements, to again show off the performance side. I included such shots as her walking on point in her ballet shoes and doing a dance jump. I also had her moving around a lot opposed to standing still as she sung the words to the song. I also watched the video ‘Beez in the trap’ by Nicki Minaj and the editing on it is really fast with quick cuts. This is typical of the R’n’B genre, however I feel the Umbrella video by Rihanna strays from this convention slightly as it isn’t an overly fast paced song so the video matches this. I too followed this when editing my video. However a convention of an R’n’B video which I did follow was the minimal clothing to sexualise the artist. I featured Georgia wearing a black leotard. I took inspiration for this from two of Beyoncé’s videos: Single Ladies and Halo. I also used the Umbrella video as Rihanna is shown in a black leotard with white detail and fishnet tights. I also decided to feature Georgia in her leotard as it is dancewear and shoes that she is a capable performer, this I took from the Halo video as Beyoncé is practicing a dance routine whilst wearing her leotard. I used close ups of Georgia as this is regularly featured in music videos particularly of the R’n’B genre as the audience want to see the artist up close and they want to see them performing and singing.
In my music video I ensured Georgia looked sexually attractive as that is what the genre demands. Rihanna herself is a sex symbol and to an extent we wanted to recreate this. At the start of the video Rihanna is featured sat down with a lot of legs on show and we decided we really like this and wanted to feature something similar in our video. So we asked Georgia to wear a leotard and had her sitting in a similar position. Later in the video a very interesting shot is filmed featuring Rihanna, she does lots of interesting shapes with her body which was something we were interested in replicating. The reason the shot works so well is because Rihanna is not wearing anything, this enables us to see every movement she makes. Although Georgia was understandably uncomfortable with such nudity she agreed to wear a leotard and due to the tight fit it allowed the same effect as we could see every movement to her body.
The video includes a number of interesting shots such as. Along with other videos of hers such as rudeboy where it features her sat on an elephant. We decided we would like to do a number of unusual and interesting shots. This follows the conventions of the music video with the singer not only being attractive but being a performer. We had her do a shot of flicking her hair backwards which we then edited so it would flick forwards and then backwards. We did this by copying one of the clips and then setting it to play in reverse. I also used the rate stretch tool to speed up the hair flicking but slowing the end down so when she puts her head back up it plays in normal time. This was really effective and gave an interesting and unusual shot, which fit the genre as it was performance based. It also reflected Rihanna’s videos as she is renowned for unusual and interesting things, she is a bold character and is quite controversial.
We used long shots to show the performance side of the video and artist as artists in the music industry particularly R’n’B genre like to display their talents and show that not only can they sing but they can dance too. This worked well with the long shot as you can see the full body move. I feel this worked particularly well when Georgia did a jump kicking her leg up to the back of her head showing her flexibility as a dancer.
We also used close ups as these are also typical of the genre as the audience want to see the performer as they are often very attractive to the opposite sex however the same sex also want to see the artist close up as they are often idolised by them. We used close ups to mimic R’n’B music videos as they display the singer doing what the audience loves them for. So we ensured Georgia was lip syncing the words perfectly, we did this by holding up the lyrics for her so she could read them if necessary however we went through the lyrics beforehand so she could learn them. We asked her to sing directly into the camera as we felt it would make a direct connection with the audience.
Althought majority of our shots were completely original we took inspiration from the video on a lot of them and attempted to replicate them to an extent, here are the ones we achieved.
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| In the original video a group dance featured so we decided to put one into ours. |
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
When making my ancillary texts I wanted them to reflect my
video so the genre and kind of things you could expect within my video would be
made obvious. So I made print screens of my favourite parts from my music video
and transferred them from the editing suite to the normal computer. I selected
the ones I thought would work best as a stand alone image for my poster. I also
took several photos of Georgia in the green room with a still camera as I knew
I would be able to use the background eraser tool to edit my background to
whatever I wanted. I tried this out by selecting my favourite photo I took that
day and removing the background. I played around with several backgrounds but
concluded the only one I felt worked was the white one, taking inspiration from
the front cover of a magazine which featured Rihanna, I felt it was simple but very
effective as Georgia stood out more and of course the main focus needed to be
on her. I made several different but
similar drafts of my poster with the white background but I wasn’t entirely
sure I felt that it was my final draft so I tried an entirely different
approach and decided to make a poster using one of my still images from the
video. The image I selected as the photo for my poster was favourite part from
the music video, it is a shot of her flicking her hair over her head. To create
this I edited this on Adobe Premierpro by making it black and white, I then lowered
the opacity of it and put another clip below it on the time line so you can see
both images at once. I print screened this and transferred this image onto
Adobe Photoshop CS5 and edited onto it the name of my artist, who I called
Georgia Red, I called her Georgia obviously as it is her name however I added
the ‘Red’ as I felt it gave her attitude as the colour red connotes danger. However
it also has connotations of lust, which adds to the sexualisation within the
genre. To enforce the images which the word red creates I changed the colour of
the font to red. Also to support the idea that it gives her persona attitude I
put it in caps lock, which gives the idea it is being shouted. I also used the
pen tool to create a ‘scribble’ then adding my text ‘Georgia’ in white on top.
I did this to make it look like spray paint, which supports the girl with
attitude/ bad girl persona, one which is very much what Rihanna stands for, for
example she has a song called ‘good girl gone bad’. Within the picture I had
Georgia wearing quite a low cut top, which again adds to the sexualisation.
What appears to be the background of the image is her on point shoes which
shows the performer element. This image I used on my poster reflects the video
as it is very performance based, typical of the genre.
The image for my magazine advert is black and white, this
gives hints as to the video as I put a lot of it in black and white. I also
made my digipak black and white, I feel this linked them all together, keeping
continuity and made it feel like a theme. I also featured the image from my
poster on my digipak so that they all related to each other. In doing this I
have synchronised different forms of media, this is cross-form synergy, a lot
of media texts use it, for example when new films are released the makers
create a DVD, a soundtrack and a poster.
I decided to keep my magazine advert simple with minimal
text on it, after looking at several magazine adverts, which are specifically
advertising a new song or album to be released I realised this was how most
artists did it. I decided to include only the artists name, the release date and
a website I made up for the benefit of the magazine article as when researching
examples of magazine articles I noticed a lot of them feature this, because
this is shown on real adverts I felt it gave a sense of realism to my advert.
To keep the continuity I featured the name of the artist on both my magazine
advert and my digipak
When creating my digipak I played around with having
pictures in colour and pictures in black and white. In doing this I felt it
made the digipak look like it was in separate parts and did not flow. Upon
noticing this I decided the make all of my pictures black and white so that it
looked more professional. I carefully selected a collection of photos, some of
white I had taken myself and some which were print screens from my music video.
To keep a sense of continuity I included the image from my magazine article on
my digipak. Another benefit of the photos being in black and white is that it
allows the red font to stand out which is just what I wanted. In naming the
album ‘Red’ in allowed continuity from the artists names. I did some research
into what artists called their album in attempt to try and think of something
interesting for mine and came across eponymous albums, these are self-titled
albums. I thought this would be an interesting idea, but instead of calling my
album Georgia Red, I concluded that ‘Red’ alone was a lot catchier.
When creating my digipak on Adobe Photoshop CS5 I used an
image I had taken on the still camera, edited it to make it black and white as
I decided this would be the theme of my image and then I duplicated the layer
and used the transform tool to flip the image vertically. I did this to imitate
a shot from my video to ensure continuity throughout all aspects of my work.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
In the planning stages of our music video we did a lot of
research into codes and conventions of different genres of music. After
deciding on the genre R’n’b we went on to looking at selecting an artist and a
song, we thought of Rihanna immediately due to her being a huge influence in
the music industry and she is a very current artist. We then decided to do one
of her most famous songs Umbrella as it allowed room for a narrative if that
was the kind of video we wanted to do but it also allowed us to select a
performance based video if we wanted. We decided we would play people our song
and ask them what they would expect from the music video after listening to the
song. We videoed the feedback we received and decided to do a performance based
video from this as everyone we received feedback from said they would expect to
see our protagonist dancing and singing because as an artist that is what
Rihanna does however they also said that Rihanna was much like Beyonce in the
way that they both perform and as they’re both from the same genre we realised
that this is what we should do with our video. We also discovered that as a
genre performance based videos were typical of this. The audience feedback was
important for this and influential on our video in deciding the type of video
we made.
We reviewed the videos we had made several times and one of them mentioned the use of
umbrellas and rain within the video and although these seems obvious we had to
ensure we did include both of these things as our feedback made us realise the video
would not function properly and fit the song if we didn’t. All three of the
people we asked for feedback said that minimal clothing was important as
Rihanna was considered a sex symbol. We took this onboard and ensured this was
included. One of the people we interviewed said they would expect to see
someone wearing expensive clothing, we tried to reflect this in the dresses we
had our performer wear, for example this one:
All of the people we
interviewed said they would relate Rihanna to Beyonce, so we ensured we watched
a number of Beyonce videos before making our video to influence us also.
When I finished my evaluation I used two different types of
feedback, first I showed two people my video and asked them set questions two
open and two closed whilst filming their responses. I found this effective and
beneficial and both said similar things. Both of which said that their
favourite bit was the mirrored part which I also found really effective and
they both said that the group sections needed working on which I again agreed
with. I felt it needed more organisation. I then uploaded it to the social
networking site Facebook as I thought people would be more confident in giving
their opinions if they weren’t sat in front of me and they weren’t being
filmed, I got a lot of positive feedback, all of which said they liked the
editing and a number of them specified particular bits ranging from the hair
flicking sequence to the mirrored image. Another person said they felt the
video fitted the genre well. I was happy that the mise-en-scene was correct. I received
one really helpful comment, it was really lengthy full of positive and negative
feedback. The comment was made by an old friend who is studying media at
university, I found his comment very interesting and helpful. Upon listening to
and reading my audience feedback if I could change my video I would have a more
organised group routine, I found that shooting it in the green room was too
small and I couldn’t get the shots quite how I wanted them. I would also make
my video more fast paced within the editing as the shots are too drawn out and
the within the feedback I was given the beginning of the video when it flits
between a number of shots it said to be the most impressive part. Also some
issues with editing the green out of the background were mentioned which was
something I particularly struggled with. I was unable to get rid of the green
entirely on a number of shots as I found the colour of her hair matched too
closely to the green and if I were to use the chroma key more it begun editing out
her hair which made it even more realistic than the unfortunate bits of
green. I also would film Georgia with
the girls stood behind her because as it says in the feedback I received they
look separate, like a background rather than them being in the distance.
However I have tried to improve that by pushing the girls slightly out of
focus. I was also told that the shots could have been varied more with panning
etc, which is something admittedly I didn’t think of at the time, I did some
interesting things with Georgia but doing interesting things with the camera at
the same time would also be beneficial. However I feel multiple cameras would
be needed to capture a lot of it as it would be difficult to get Georgia to
whip her hair and jump exactly the same twice so I could film it from different
angles, so two cameras from two different angles would have helped however I
know this would be impossible at college.
I chose to create a completely performance based video however my
feedback says that some narrative would have perhaps improved it, this is
something I could look into however I do feel that a performance based video
fits the genre better. 
How did you use new media technologies in the construction
and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In the construction stages of my coursework I used the
internet in excess to look for inspiration, to research the genre and to watch music
videos. For this I greatly depended on google, I used google to research
different genres and the codes and conventions of each, I used this when
deciding what kind of video I would do. Upon deciding the genre I moved on to looking
at different artists within that genre, again using google to do so. I looked
at such artists as Rihanna, Beyonce and Nicki Minaj. I narrowed it down to
Rihanna eventually but had to begin looking at different songs so I could
decide which would be fitting. I used google to find a list of all of Rihanna’s
songs and eliminated any which I deemed inappropriate, I eventually decided on
Umbrella, a song of Rihanna’s from 2007. I then went on to used google to look
at the lyrics of my chosen song, and I put them on my blog, I looked at the
meaning of the lyrics as I thought it would help me in deciding whether I would
do a narrative, performance based or abstract video. Finding the lyrics also
benefited us in the filming process as I printed the lyrics I found on google
so Georgia and Kabi could read and learn them. I then copied them up onto
larger pieces of paper so both my artists could see them if they needed while
we filmed them performing.
I then needed to move on to using the website youtube, I
found this invaluable as I must have watched the Rihanna, Umbrella video, what
feels like hundreds of times. However not only did I use youtube to watch the
video to the song I had selected I also used it to watch other music videos, by
such artists as Beyonce and Nicki Minaj. I found Beyonce’s videos particularly influlential
particularly single ladies and Halo. Although I did use youtube to watch videos
which weren’t just of the R’n’B genre, I also watched videos by such artists as
The Kooks and The Vaccines previous to choosing my genre and song. Not only did
I use youtube to watch music videos which influenced my video, I used it to
upload things such as my animatic, my audience feedback and my music video
itself. I felt this was the best way to do it as I could transfer it to my blog
with ease.
The website I used most of all was of course blogger,
featuring my entire coursework. This has kept my work safe and organised and
has allowed a visual of how my coursework has developed over the months into
what it is now.
I also used media technology’s that weren’t internet based
such as Adobe Premierpro CS6, which was the program I used most as it was the
one I edited my video on. I filmed different shoots and the transferred them
straight onto the editing suite to which this program belonged. When transferring
them I added a new folder, naming it “Shoot 1” and so forth for whichever shoot
the clips belong, making it easier to sort through them when editing my
complete video sequence. The program allowed me to edit the clips using such
tools as the 4-point garbage tool, which removed certain aspects of the clips
which were included that I didn’t require such as one clip of Kabi where I had
accidently got the light in the shot, this tool removed that. I also used the
rate stretch tool when I wanted to slow clips down, such as the clip when she
flicks her hair and clips of the girls in a group twirling their umbrellas. I
also used this tool to speed things up to allow it to fit to the music, such as
the clip of Georgia walking on her point shoes. I removed the green from the
background using the chroma key to get rid of the most part and the colour key
to do the fine tuning. I also used a tool which allowed me to play the clip in
reverse, which was particularly effective, amongst many other tools.
Another media technology I used was of course the camera
which I did all of my filming on, this was a Sony Handycam, I was very happy
with the quality of the camera and had very few problems with it. However upon
reflection I think I would have varied the shots more. Perhaps doing more
handheld shots, although I did one or two, more of these would have given the
video the variation it required. I also used an Olympus SP600 to take still photos of Georgia for my digipak and magazine advert.
In addition to all of these I also used my iPhone 4s to film
the audience feedback, this was good because it didn’t require really high
definition filming so I could use the camera on my phone which was sufficient,
it was convenient because the video cameras were quite hard to get hold of so I
was glad I could use my phone as I was able to upload it to blog easily as I
also used the Blogger app on my phone so I could do it straight from my phone
to my blog. My phone was very useful for updating my blog when I wasn’t at a
computer. I also used my hp laptop at home to not only
update my blog but I also used the webcam on it to film the audience feedback
of my finalised video.
Here are all my finished products
Here are all my finished products
